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A Rough Guide to Berlin

C. Biswas | 26.12.2004 16:41 | Anti-racism | Culture | London

The Rough Guide to Berlin.
Are the Germans as cosmopolitan as they would like to believe?


The Rough Guide to Berlin.
by C. Biswas



Non-plussed and choking on the fumes of my inner-city London life, daunted by the after-school bus chatter of 12 year olds speaking standardised Mockney, that bastardised teenage dialect with its "like" and "for real", a hotch-potch of Cockney and Jamaican "cussing" ("blood-klaaat" having reached epidemic proportions in South London), I decided to ferry it across the North Sea to Germany.

Attracted by the prospect of cheaper rent and not having to pay £3.80 for a sexed-up cappuccino, my partner and I decided to live the dream of free passage between the United States of Europe.
Post-reunification East Berlin is a sanitised haven for young professionals and artists from all over the world. The capital of the New Germany is however completely bankrupt, as a result of the corrupt banking scandals of the nineties.

As an English and French teacher I should have been wary of the fact that most of my adult students were
"between jobs", but I came to undertstand what a mess Berlin was facing when chronic unemployment had to be countered with the Hartz IV reforms whereby people are forced to take on "€1 jobs": Yes folks it does just what it says on the tin: Jobs at € 1.50 an hour.

As a film actress and a dancer, I started questioning my sly move to Germany as other dancers were being sacked en masse from their companies as a result of massive arts cutbacks. Every acting job I was cast for turned me down before reheated the offer as an "extra" job, effectively paying at a rate reduced to as little as 30% of the typical industry standard. Meanwhile my German yuppie friends pronounced the German economy dead in the water as they legged it to other states in Germany or even better, abroad.
Faced with this free-for-all version of the free market, I started to question the vibes I was getting as a foreigner...

As a second generation immigrant of mixed heritage, with a Masters' degree from an "elite university"
(as they put it here), I was increasingly taken aback by the race bias that any olive-skinned person may encounter in Germany: you are generally frowned upon and tutted at, thrown half-baked insults such as "Det kennen wir schon..." (accompanied by a knowing nod), roughly translated as " We know your type..." The type being in this case I assumed, foreign, or was it a more "sophisticated" prejudice?

The Germans, we know are very proud of their so-called "multi-kulti" society, loosely based on the fact that you can get a kebab at any time of day or night, or choose from a whole range of foreign restaurants without leaving your area. But there's a world of difference between eating a Doner and living in peace and harmony. I gradually realised that the Turkish population was berated for being "a bunch of good for nothings dollies" and were often openly abused as being "scheiss-macher", even "Kanaken" or "Negern". which I will not abase myself to translate... The sad thing is that these racial epithets are still so much in common use.

Let me explain, fellow Euro-Trash: The Islamic community in Berlin occupies the highest percentage of all Islamic minorities in Germany. They are currently at the heart of the "integration" debate which is raging in every organ of the national press. The problematic loosely revolves around whether the Muslim population has gone too far in its expression of Islam, resulting in young girls' wearing of the hijab as being radical, refusal by the older population to integrate and learn German as a second language and the consistent refusal to teach their children enough German to get their Abitur (A-Levels), causing havoc amongst those of the indigenous population who feel they then have to taxi their kids to a "nicer" part of town for a "better" (or less multi-kulti) schooling....
Judging by the results of the recent European PISA literacy study, it seems that educational standards here are falling, which many Germans would like to blame on foreigners (you can live in this country for years having been born here as a immigrant and still not obtain a passport in your twenties).

Maybe the Germans need to change their perspective on the subject and address the problem from the immigrant's angle: Invited to work as "guests" to help with the German Economic Miracle of the Sixties, many Germans would rather see Turkish immigration as a thing of the past. I hear Berliners complain bitterly at how the working "Gastarbeiter" men-folk invited their families over to join them, something quite natural in England where entire villages where displaced from India in order to contribute to the Host country's economy.

When my educated German friends remarked that theirs was a "Turkish problem" I calmly asked them if they had ever been to London. My friends agreed that London was very multi-cultural, but opined that the foreign population had further integrated themselves into the "Dominant " culture in comparison with Germany. I wondered whether it was the job of the German media to push multi-racial issues beyond the bad joke that was the present state of affairs, where Turkish actors have to resign themselves to a life of on-screen petty criminality reflecting the prejudices of the general public. Hopefully this is changing with the mainstream appeal of Hip-Hop to the younger generation and the success of such films as "Gegen Die Wand" or TV ethno-comedy series like "The King of Kreuzberg". I live and learn...

Haven't these people heard of Equal Opportunities? Obviously an alien term in a city like Berlin where a darker-skinned person gets curious looks when they read the paper in public - I mean, can they really still think all foreigners are illiterate? It seems I've left the nation of the Sun and Daily Mail, swapping it for a country of BZ readers....

C. Biswas

Comments

Hide the following 3 comments

Racism is everywhere

26.12.2004 20:12

Hello

I am a German who was existing in Britain and in other countries too some years.

I mean most of your remarks are correct.
However, your opinion is not true that racism is only in Germany.
Racism you can feel in every country in Britain too, For example think of the 3 L if people are looking for a house and in which areas are houses very cheap in Britain ?

However, you are correct about Hartz 4, unemployment and so on in Germany.
It is terrible for many people, but not only for foreigners. Many German people are complaining too that they are treated badly in offices from the government (Sozialamt, Arbeitsamt, eg).
I think you should be alert, that New Labour Party in Britain is not following this unsocial way that the German New Labour Party is taking now.

w


Germant and Britain are not so different

26.12.2004 22:50

I lived in Berlin for two years and found it a relatively liberal city. Indeed, it must be one of the most interesting, exiting, open, and friendly cities to live in, despite the very high unemployment. You just don't get the binge drinking and violence, either

I met so many lovely friendly people there, and I loved their openness and directness.

The last comment about government front line employees being unhelpful is all too true in my experience. It wasn't racism, it was a customer services issue, coupled with my almost non-existent German. As a Brit, who skin colour is a pale shade of white, they had little time for me. Well not all of them.

There's problems with racism and the far right, but not dissimilar from here, although they don't have the popularist tabloid culture to the extent we do here.

The far right is better organised and probably more of a latent threat than in the UK. But even Schroeder's SPD, whom I have no time for particularly, have done far more than New Labour to combat the far right, for example with legislation. And they don't engage in far right populism, and play the racist card to the disgusting degree to which Blair and Co do.

I had a tear in my eye when I said good bye to Berlin.

There were loads of anti-fascist groups, networks and activity.

Berlin's a great place to live, and more tolerant than any other city I have spent time in - but not one in which to find a job, no matter how well qualified you might be.

H


Don't assume english and an elite degree is a passport to a job.

27.12.2004 01:24

Berlin has been full of out of work actors, musicians, writers, dancers, and artists since the wall came tumbling down, who try and make ends meet by teaching english and french as a side line. Also, unemployment is huge in Berlin too. It takes a lot of hard work, talent or bullshitting to make it there, so don't get all arsey and bitter about not getting a job.

Yes, there is a lack of equal opportunities, and prejudice from government bureaucrats if you don't speak German, but that's not necessarily to do with ethnic group or skin colour. So learn the language if you want to live there and work, otherwise you'll never get a job. Excellent and cheap courses are provided at local colleges for new arrivals.

About the German economy. OK, they are going through a bad time, with high unemployment. But this is a cyclical feature, a function of capitalism, and has been ever thus since its birth. Despite this, Germany has vastly superior productivity, exports even more manufactured goods than the US, and still has the most generous social benefits in the world. They can produce their way to fuller employment as long as their exports continue to find a market.

Britain’s economy is being buoyed up by consumer debt financed consumption and the dependent service sector. The history of capitalism tells us one thing: this will deflate into recession. When it happens the UK wont have the manufacturing capacity to export its way out of the mire, but will sink further in and stay there. The same will happen to the US, because balls and all capitalism will be proven to be inferior to the so called social democratic model.

So. Conclusion. Revolution will start in the UK, and US, as long as they don't put us in a fascist straight-jacket first; in which case: how ironic that fascism might come to our shores, with the Germans fighting to liberate us.

Helmut Head